The only John Lennon solo album to reach number one
Despite broadly standing the tallest in critical stature of the solo Beatles, John Lennon never nabbed quite as many chart-topping albums as you’d think.
They all started strong. Mere months after Let It Be closed the Fab Four story, George Harrison struck a UK number one with his All Things Must Pass triple LP in late 1970, with Wings’ Band on the Run winning likewise three years later. Ringo Starr managed a top ten hit the same year, Ringo peaking at seven while even coming second over in the States.
Lennon’s solo career was already flying while The Beatles were still just about active as a unit. ‘Give Peace a Chance’ was out a couple of months ahead of Abbey Road, his and Yoko Ono’s avant-garde EP series counted three releases by late 1969, and the two were already turning their marriage into a giant performance art cum peace platform for the world’s stage.
Such posturing would fatigue much of the music press, as well as the perennial fascination with themselves as a couple right up until the 1980s, but few would argue against Lennon possessing the most essential songs so late in his career. Paul McCartney was already wading into seriously diminishing returns with his waning Wings by around 1975; Harrison seemed to grow tired of the whole music gig, and Ringo was steadily traipsing into the moribund dead ends of his pre-All-Starr Band identity crisis.
But Lennon was still able to knock up a surrealist gem like ‘#9 Dream’ or ‘Whatever Gets You thru the Night’s’ whirlwind jam before his house husband retreat from the charts. Once back in 1980, spurred by McCartney’s ‘Coming Up’ comeback that year, Lennon was again armed with a sharper songcraft than his former Beatles, which looked set to usher in a new era for him before his violent end in December and the mourning of fans all over the world.
Which solo John Lennon album reached number one?
Technically speaking, there’s only one. Once back from his musical hibernation, 1980’s Double Fantasy was initially met with a lacklustre commercial reception and mixed reviews, much of the press tiring of the couple’s thematic obsession with each other.
Yet, his assassination at the end of the year scrubbed all negative critique out of circulation, with Double Fantasy shooting to number one on both sides of the Atlantic, and its ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ and ‘Woman’ singles topping the UK Singles chart. Double Fantasy, however, was credited to both Lennon and Ono, each handling half of the material, alternatively sequenced on the record, akin to a husband and wife’s exchange.
For a legit solo Lennon album that’s not with Ono or under their frequently used Plastic Ono Band moniker, we have to go to his immortal second LP. Released in October 1971 in the UK, Imagine would reach number one in his home country as well as multiple other countries, and still stands as the defining record of his solo legacy nearly 55 years later.
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